What it's about

Smartcoffeecard.co.nz is a portal that was set up for one sole purpose - to make the entire affair of having a cup of coffee at a cafe more enjoyable and easy. Located in the cozy and coffee enthusiast island of New Zealand, this is a portal that makes it easy for coffee lovers and cafe owners to make use of loyalty cards so that it's a win-win situation for both parties.

This portal has been designed ensuring that the highest standards of quality are maintained at all times while simultaneously adhering to proven methodologies to be sure that it is easy to use while catering to different segments of the coffee loving population, ranging from students to professionals.

The content available on this portal includes:

Details regarding the outline and concept of smartcoffeecard.

Benefits that cafe owners and customers alike will avail on signing up.

Step by step details on how it works and why this is the best scheme for coffee lovers.

Detailed blog that provides people with details regarding the advances in electronic coffee cards.

What the customer wanted ?

The customer approached us with the complaint of a wallet that was burgeoning under the weight of multiple loyalty cards and wanted a portal that could help do away with this problem. Thus, the main mission of this website is to make it an easy and streamlined process for cafe owners and customers to maintain, develop, use and follow loyalty cards in a paper-free way, such that it can be carried around on their smartphones.

The conviction is that with the number of coffee lovers and smartphone owners both increasing by the day, an easy, convenient, environment friendly way of managing loyalty cards can easily be established. Furthermore, the portal also aims to allow customers to have the flexibility of choosing whichever plan they wish to subscribe to and also updates customers with special discounts and offers that may be running in their favorite cafes.

The owner duo came with an initial requirement of a framework that would be user friendly and running on an SQL database. They wished for the site to be able to handle massive traffic volumes in accordance with the growing sector of tech savvy youngsters that hung out at cafes. Thus, the site needed to handle a huge search volume while at the same time offering the admin the chance of easily managing the multiple users that were expected to visit the site on a daily basis.

what we built

After hearing out the details of the requirement that the client had, we set to work and opted for the open source Cake PHP framework; a framework that is known for its robustness and its easy to use interface for developer. Furthermore, this is a framework that also allows users to add module after module onto its original structure even after deployment without any further glitches. Another factor that went into choosing the Cake PHP framework was that MySQL, another open-source SQL database, supported it. After a detailed research, we concluded that an initial user volume of 10,000 regular visitors would soon increase to include the smartphone owning, coffee drinking population that is currently scattered all over New Zealand and which is growing by the minute. A detailed insight into the country's demographics and social and urban patters gave us a further idea as to what a general user might look for in such a site.

Among the modules developed were:

Main landing page that is simple, smartly coffee-themed and which allows users to get a bird's eye view of what smartcoffeecard is all about. It also offers a quick and easy video tour on what it offers and how to get started.

A quick and easy video tour on what smartcoffeecard offers and how to get started.

An 'About us' page that smartly and simply details the people running the show and their earnest oath to make this a profitable and pleasant endeavor for cafe owners and coffee drinkersalike.

A detailed step by step guide on how to get started for cafe owners and on how to use smartcoffeecard and ways to make it accessible for customers by offering them various discounts and offers.

A page detailing the various benefits that a cafe owner can avail by signing up for electronic loyalty cards, including regular updates on discounts and offers for customers and a way to easily get feed backs and keep track of which customer gets free coffee when.

FAQs that help clear any further doubts that cafe owners that are still apprehensive about the safety and benefits of using smartcoffeecard may still have.

Details regarding the terms and conditions and privacy policies of using the service being offered.

A simple yet effective blog that details the newer technology wave that is sweeping coffee culture in the form of a strong switch from separate, individual paper based loyalty cards to a simple, all-in-one electronic loyalty card.

How its doing now ?

Smartcoffeecard has proven to be a pioneer in the novel idea of providing cafe owners with a hassle free way of keeping track of their customers and their loyalty records. With the coffee culture booming and slowly sweeping the world, it offers a unique blend of technology and coffee to the lucky residents of New Zealand. With an ever increasing awareness and traffic peak during festive and holiday seasons, smartcoffeecard is going strong and aims to revolutionize the coffee culture in the near future.